Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses issues of health and well-being among Tamil refugees in Norway. As biomedical approaches seem insufficient in explaining Tamil pains, here perspectives are employed that emphasise an active, perceptive body and see health as embedded in social relations and cultural values.

Paper long abstract:

Studies on refugees' illness tend to focus on the dramas of war, losses and trauma. This paper aims to shed light on questions of health and well-being among Tamil refugees who have resettled in a fishing village along the arctic coast of Norway. Many of the Tamils tend to visit the local health care center with what the physicians refers to as "diffuse aches and pains", and which they find difficult to diagnose and treat. As biomedical approaches seem insufficient in explaining these pains, this study introduces perspectives that include an understanding of health as embedded in social relations and cultural values. Rather than looking at illness as somatization and symptoms of physiological or psychological malfunctions, this paper suggests an understanding that allow an active, perceptive body and view the self as an orienting point of "being in the world". Tamils illnesses are proposed rather as "expressive signs" that refer to a challenge and collapse in habituated patterns for constituting meaning and social practices. Data was generated during two different fieldwork periods: between 1996 and 1999 the author did shorter field visits in the region and conducted in-depth interviews and participant observation amongst Tamils and local health care workers, including observing health care consultations; between Sept 1999-Sept 2000 intensive fieldwork was undertaken amongst Tamil refugees in a small fishing village.

Submission by

Anne Sigfrid Grønseth

Research Fellow

Dept. of Social Anthropology, NTNU, Dragvoll

7491 Trondheim, Norway

anne.gronseth@svt.ntnu.no